The day when heavy machinery and manpower transformed a Dutch beach into a lunar landscape of hills and craters. At sunset the labor stopped, and a live drumbeat announced the ceremony of a woman, gracing this imaginary moon with an American flag. The same evening, while the party still went on, the landscape was flattened out again, leaving no physical trace of the event behind—save the memories and a story to tell future generations.

See installation shots from FLAKK, The Nordic House, Reykjavik, 2000.

Watch the video HERE.

1961, April 12: The Soviet Union launches the first manned space vehicle, Vostok 1, which completes a single orbit of the Earth. ‘The earth is blue’—the words of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel in space, become globally famous.

1961, May 5: The US launches a Mercury spacecraft carrying astronaut Alan Shepard. Defeated by the Russians in the space race by only three weeks, President Kennedy gives a spirited speech before Congress where he dedicates the resources of this nation ‘... to achieving the goal before the decade is out, of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth!’ This will take billions of dollars and the invention of a new space rocket.

1969, July 20: The Apollo 11 crew makes the first human landing on the moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Spacecraft commander Armstrong and astronaut Buzz Aldrin spend two hours on the lunar surface setting up observation equipment and collecting rock samples. The American flag is deployed and a plaque is unveiled with the inscription: ‘Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace for All Mankind.’

After this, Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 each landed two astronauts on the surface. For the rest of mankind, the landings have become but a mediated reality. This fact and the political backdrop of the Cold War have since fueled a whole genre of conspiracy theories that question the authenticity of the moon landings. NASA holds over 100,000 still photographs taken with Hasselblad cameras from the Apollo missions, but only a small fraction, depicting the heroism of the mission, were originally released to the public. The same photographs were analyzed by conspiracy theorists who found in them numerous and by now classic clues in their angles and shadows, pointing to the physical impossibility of the missions. These technical theories have since been counter-proven by photographic expertise. Yet the debate surrounding the original landing’s authenticity continues to flourish thanks to movies like Capricorn One and on the Internet.

1999, March: Aleksandra Mir is invited by the non-profit organization Casco Projects to realize a public project in Holland. She is interested in working outdoors within the Dutch beaches, which are known to be manmade and contested territories. She conceives of the moon-landing project to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original event, effectively trying to beat JFK’s words and put a woman on the moon ‘... before the end of the millennium’.

1999, April: The production of the FIRST WOMAN ON THE MOON begins. Casco’s office in Utrecht is turned into an information center from which press releases are sent out. The public is invited to follow the project developments. The project budget, $2,000, is spent the first day on a half-page ad in Artforum:‘To announce the news of this historic event to the world’. With a zero-budget economy, everything from here on in needs to be invented from scratch.

1999, May: After initial scouting and definition of the site at the entry of the North Sea Canal, red tape is cleared with the local municipalities of Belsen and Bewerwijk. Informal relations with locals are created during numerous fieldtrips, and become directly instrumental to the realization of the work. The project’s alternative economies eventually range from spontaneous friendships to corporate sponsorship agreements, both of which will define the project’s aesthetic and outcome. Goodwill machinery and manpower is arranged from local machine parks and from the steel factory that looms above the site. The men who normally deal with waste management agree to turn some sand and play on the beach for a day.

1999, June: The feedback from the publicity campaign starts to come in. An Australian gender studies department is cheering (Go girls!), a US feminist organization takes offense at the conflation of their cause with the use of the American flag (Imperialism!). Devoted to breaking NASA’s monopoly of space travel, the Dutch anarchist organization Association Autonomous Astronauts first shows great interest in the project, but after realizing it will not take anyone anywhere insists on its cancellation. The interest in Dutch media mounts. Beginning with interviews given in the local press, coverage escalates, resulting in the arrival of three TV stations on site and the production of several breakfast TV shows. Footage is eventually sold and shown in places as far as Djakarta.

1999, August: Everything but a documentary budget is in place. Victor Hasselblad AB, the Swedish camera producer originally employed by NASA, is approached for support. They are delighted to be involved, as they claim to have advertised the moon for 30 years and are proud to continue the tradition. The question of this landing being a fake is not even raised. The issue at stake is how to get the best possible image out of it. The company equips two photographers with first class equipment and adds a 35mm panoramic camera as product placement, to be worn by Aleksandra Mir all day, just like Neil Armstrong did. The fruitful relation with Hasselblad and the contracted use of their logo in the photographs become an emblem of authenticity, a signature that effectively closes the link between NASA’s and the artist’s ambitions.

1999, August 28: FIRST WOMAN ON THE MOON is realized in ten hours. During a short morning meeting with the crew, Aleksandra Mir draws a sketch of a crater in the sand. The 200x300 square-meter full-size landscape is thereafter completely improvised by the workers themselves. During the process of digging, tons of garbage and broken glass are revealed in the sand. It is collected and placed out on tables, making for an impromptu ‘Museum of Lunar Surface Findings’ to which the public contributes all day. By the afternoon, the water has unexpectedly risen to fill the craters, creating numerous little lakes for kids to play in. Everyone is taking pictures of everyone. And at sunset, the flag finally graces the highest hill, a champagne bottle is cracked open and the public is welcomed to join the astronauts on the moon. One person declares himself ‘The First Black Man on the Moon’, another, ‘The First German’.

1999, September: Postproduction begins. Footage shot by the TV stations on site is requested and reclaimed back into the project, edited into a 10-min long video documentary that takes on a life on its own as it travels to various art world venues. It serves a German conference on women’s art and an Icelandic show on displaced geographies. Everyone is using the moon landing for their own purposes. Hasselblad contributes the soundtrack, created for their in-house presentation of shots from the original event; it includes newly composed music overlaid with original NASA communications and Kennedy’s famous speech.

1999, November: The video is exhibited at the Swiss Institute’s exhibition ‘Empires without States’ curated by Annette Schindler. A special event, ‘Conspiracy Night’, brings British conspiracy theorist Conrado Salas to New York. He declares the original mission a fake—shot in a Hollywood film studio—and the two events are then compared on aesthetic grounds. He also advises the artist to show her tape to Neil Armstrong and Arthur C. Clarke.

2001, July: Two letters with enclosed videos are addressed to Sir. Arthur C. Clarke in Colombo and Neil Armstrong in Ohio. The two men who in the 20th century expanded our vision into outer space far beyond anyone’s imagination have chosen to live at the most peripheral (‘   ’) places on Earth.

texts on First Woman on the Moon:

Smith, Roberta, Space Exploration, Conducted on a Spiral, New York Times, July 20, 2007.
Sgualdini, Silvia, How to do something from nothing, UOVO, Torino, Dec 2006.
Sansone, Valentina, Aleksandra Mir, Flashart, #260, Milan, Oct 2006.
Spector, Nancy, All The World..., Frieze, London, #98, April 2006.
Ruckkehr Ins All, Hamburger Kunsthalle Siemens Art Program, Ed. Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2005.
Bell, Kirsty, Aleksandra Mir, Camera Austria, Nov 2004.
Landi, Ann, Moving Mountains, Walking on Water, ArtNews, NYC, June 2004.
Bollen, Christopher, Aleksandra Mir, The Believer #9, San Francisco, Dec 03/Jan 04.
Doherty, Claire, Aleksandra Mir, Situations lecture series, Bristol, 2003.
Jetzer, Gianni, Let's see what happens and who will be there, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, April 2003.
Bradley, Will, Life and Times, Frieze, Issue 75, 2003.
Williams, Gilda, Aleksandra mir from A to Z, Art Monthly, no 266, 2003.
Griffin,Tim, Openings: Aleksandra Mir, Artforum, Feb, 2003.
Ingvarsdotti, Frida Björk, Flakk Um Heima og Geima, Morgunbladid Reykjavik, 27 May, 2000.
Bloom, Brett, Making room to step outside, Ten Ten, Chicago, Vol #1 No #2, 2000.
Meikle, Merry, Video has an aesthetic all to itself, NY Arts magazine, NYC, Vol 5. No1. Jan 2000.
Stigter, Diana and van Elsberg, Jaqueline, Overture: Aleksandra Mir, Flash Art, Milan, March/April 2000.
Larsen, Lars Bang, First Woman on the Moon, Frieze, London, #50, January 2000.
Engel, Beate, Die Kunstwelt als Truman Show, Die Wochenseitung Bern. #48/2,Dec. 1999.
Ellis, Patricia ,First Woman on the Moon, Flash Art, Milan, Oct. 1999.
Stegeman, Elly, First Woman on the Moon, Metropolis M, Rotterdam, #5, Oct. 1999.
Eddisford, Diane, Building Castles in the Sand, MUTE, London, #14, Oct.1999.
Bergman, Take, First Woman on the Moon, Noord Hollands Dagblad, Ilmujden, 31 Aug. 1999.
Wouters, Julia, Interview w. Aleksandra Mir, IJmond TV8, Wijk aan Zee, 25 Aug. 1999.
Kitzmann, Richard, Interview w. Aleksandra Mir, IJmond TV8, Wijk aan Zee, 28 Aug. 1999.
Knegtmans, Heleen, Interview w. Aleksandra Mir, Wereldtelevisie, Wijk aan Zee, 28 Aug. 1999.
Junte, Jeroen, Kunstenares Mir landt op strand, De Volkskrant, Amsterdam, 27/8/1999.
van Elfsberg, Jaqueline, First Woman on the Moon, Skrien, Amsterdam., 9/1999.
van der Meer, Jos, Casco verandert strand in een maanlandschap, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Utrecht, 27 Aug. 1999.
van Meeuwen, Arjan, Site specific, LucasX, Amsterdam, #4, 27 Aug. 1999.
Smit, Albert, Interview w. Karen Baldock on the Moon Landing, Radio Beverwijk, Wijk aan Zee, 11 Aug. 1999.